Supporting Self-Efficacy Through Goal Setting and Reflection

The Language and Literacy Spectrum Volume 30 Issue 1 Article 1 May 2020 Developing Strategic Learners: Supporting Self-Efficacy Through Goal Setting and Reflection Zoi A. Traga Philippakos University of Tennessee, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/lls Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Elementary Education Commons, Language and Literacy Education Commons, Secondary Education Commons, and the Special Education and Teaching Commons Recommended Citation Traga Philippakos, Zoi A. (2020) "Developing Strategic Learners: Supporting Self-Efficacy Through Goal Setting and Reflection," The Language and Literacy Spectrum: Vol. 30 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. Available at: https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/lls/vol30/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Elementary Education and Reading at Digital Commons at Buffalo State. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Language and Literacy Spectrum by an authorized editor of Digital Commons at Buffalo State. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Running head: DEVELOPING STRATEGIC LEARNERS: SUPPORTING GOAL SETTING Introduction Writing is a challenging literacy task (Graham, Harris, & Chambers, 2016). For learners to be effective writers, they need to understand and respond to the needs of the audience, to represent the characteristics of the discourse, to have stylistic variation, and to write with grammatical and syntactic accuracy and clarity (Hayes, 1996; 2006). Throughout the writing process, writers apply cognitive and metacognitive strategies to achieve their writing goals and produce a coherent message. When they reach the end of their work, they should also reflect on their use of strategies, on what they learned, and set new goals and learning objectives. Without a process of goal setting to identify areas of improvement, learners may come to judge their performance solely by a grade, which may affect their self-efficacy and mindset that writing is a fixed ability (some people are born good writers). Students may not have a good understanding about how to set goals, reflect on their progress, and grow through cycles of goal setting, application, reflection. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to comment on the value and importance of goal setting for students and teachers. Specifically, the use of goal setting after self-evaluation and revision are explained. Self-efficacy, the process of goal setting, effects on growth mindset, and self- regulation are first explained. Then the instructional approach and its components are presented with materials for classroom use. The paper closes with guidance for teachers’ goal setting and clarifications about the meaning of instructional goals and professional goals. Self-Efficacy in Writing Self-efficacy relates to beliefs that someone holds that they can be successful at completing a task or not. Bandura, defined self-efficacy beliefs as “people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of DEVELOPING STRATEGIC LEARNERS: SUPPORTING GOAL SETTING 2 performances” (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). Self-efficacy in writing refers to beliefs a writer holds on their ability to be a successful communicator and writer. These beliefs are strongly influenced by the social context, the classroom, as well as the writer’s emotions and past experiences. For instance, if a writer has been consistently told that their papers are not clear, not well written, and has received poor grading, the writer is very likely to develop avoidance goals, and the belief that independently of the task and effort, the outcome will not change. Overall, beliefs are strongly affected by previous experiences of successes or failures, by the observation of others’ success or failure, by comments that others make about one’s ability, and by emotions about tasks (e.g., anxiety about a task can negatively affect self-efficacy) (Bandura, 1986; 1994; 1996; 1997). Self- efficacy beliefs connect with writing performance (Bruning & Horn, 2000; Graham & Harris, 2005; Pajares & Johnson, 1994, 1996) and can have a strong influence on the effort, motivation, perseverance, feelings of stress, and overall actions that people take (Pajares, 1994; 1996; Pajares & Valiante, 1997). Bandura referred to four sources of self-efficacy: Mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasions, and physiological and emotional states (Bandura, 1997). Mastery experiences refers to previous experiences that resulted in success. Previous, successful experiences lead to an interpretation of the person’s capability to complete similar tasks; thus, the person develops a self-efficacy belief that s/he is able to achieve a specific writing task. For instance, when a writer has engaged in writing an opinion paper and was successful in its completion, it is more likely to develop the belief that s/he can write this type of genre in the future. Mastery experiences and perceived mastery experience have a strong influence in the development of self-efficacy beliefs (Pajares, Johnson, & Usher, 2007). DEVELOPING STRATEGIC LEARNERS: SUPPORTING GOAL SETTING 3 Vicarious experiences relate to the observation of others who perform tasks that may be unknown or not as familiar to the writer. The observation of models that are similar to the observer can significantly affect writer’s self-efficacy beliefs as they are able to observe the completion of the task and thus develop the needed familiarity and comfort to attempt to complete it as well as the belief that they are capable to effectively complete it. The use of coping models that overcome difficulties while completing a task can be more supportive compared to mastery models. That is because observers are able to better understand how to effectively overcome a challenge that they will very likely also encounter (Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2002). Social persuasions refer to verbal comments and judgements that others make about writers’ performance. Positive comments and praise can affect the writers’ beliefs and effort. Similarly, negative comments can demotivate and weaken writers. When actions are negative (e.g., overcorrection) but comments are positive (praise), the former can have higher influence on writer’s self-efficacy beliefs than the latter (Pajares, Johnson, & Usher, 2007). Finally, emotional states such as stress and anxiety can influence self-efficacy beliefs. Thus, when writers feel stress about their abilities to complete a task, they can become even more anxious and develop negative self-efficacy beliefs and result in poor performance. Because of low self-efficacy, students may develop the belief that being a writer is a fixed condition: Someone is born to be a writer. Such a belief contrasts an incremental belief of ability that writing develops and is the result of effort. People hold fixed and incremental views on intelligence (Dweck & Master 2009), on reading (Baird, Scot, Dearing, & Hamill (2009), on mathematics (Rattan, Good, & Dweck, 2012), and develop a mindset that progress is not attainable. Learners with an entity belief may have a sense of helplessness and gradually avoid DEVELOPING STRATEGIC LEARNERS: SUPPORTING GOAL SETTING 4 asking for help or engaging with writing tasks. This avoidance is due to the need not to reveal to others their perceived incompetence and avoid feelings of embarrassment. Further, learners with a fixed mindset may focus more on the performance (and grade) and not on the learning and development of understanding (Hochanadel & Finamore, 2015). The use of feedback that provides students with information about their progress can decrease students’ anxiety compared to feedback that points out the distance from the expected, ideal performance. Such feedback promotes a growth mindset as it supports students in seeing that improvement is the result of learning and effort (Ng, 2018). Goal Setting and Goal Orientation Self-efficacy beliefs can affect writers’ goal orientation. There are mastery goals, performance goals, and avoidance goals reported in the literature (e.g., Middleton & Midgley, 1997). Mastery goals refer to increases in competence and the will to increase competence in a specific skill (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). For example, in the case of writing, mastery goals would refer to improvements on writing competence for a specific type of writing and self- improvement (e.g., striving to clearly communicate ideas to readers). Contrary to mastery goals, performance goals refer to increases in performance relative to others. Thus, the focus is on social recognition and on attaining a standard (e.g., a grade) that will be better compared to others. In this case motivation is external. Mastery-avoidance goals may refer to avoidance of challenging tasks as there is a comfort of competence while completing a specific type of task. For instance, continuously selecting to write a story versus engaging in other genres. This may also involve writing about a topic a writer is very familiar and successful with without choosing a different one. Mastery avoidance goals can inhibit performance (Yperen, Elliott, & Anseel, 2009). Performance- DEVELOPING STRATEGIC LEARNERS: SUPPORTING GOAL SETTING 5 avoidance goals take place when learners avoid engaging in a learning situation because they do not wish to fail in front of others or perform less compared to others (Elliot, 2009; Yperen, Elliot, & Anseel, (2009). Therefore, they may avoid

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